46 The Bulletin. 



A full colony contains usually from 30,000 to 60,000 bees, and, with the 

 exception of a few hundred drones, all are females. It is strictly a "female 

 institution," governed, and perfectly, too, by a queen. The drone, while he 

 performs certain duties prescribed for him, has no "say so" as to the govern- 

 ment of the colony at all. He is created for certain purposes and after these 

 are performed he is cast forth from the box, crippled and maimed, to starve. 



One of the most wonderful things about bees is this : By special feeding 

 and treatment they can produce from any egg in the box either a worker, 

 queen or drone. This is wonderful and something no expert has yet been able 

 to explain. 



Another wonderful thing, too, is this : It has been proven beyond contra- 

 diction that a good healthy queen can lay during the heavy breeding season, 

 which is late spring, from 2,000 to 3,000 eggs a day. Now, to one not familiar 

 with bee-keeping this may -seem unreasonable, but there is nothing strange 

 about it. I have taken a comb l'roin a box on which was a laying queen and 

 proven to my own satisfaction that such is true. Of course, her body does 

 not contain all these eggs at one time. After exhausting her supply she 

 resorts to a cell or cut containing a white, "pasty"-like food. She will par- 

 take of this food and you can see with your naked eye her body gradually 

 grow larger. After .a bit she moves away and it will not be long before you 

 will see her begin depositing eggs as before. Of course it is absolutely nec- 

 essary that she lay heavily, as she has a family of 30,000 or 60,000 to keep 

 up, as the life of the held bee, or worker, is only about twenty-one days to a 

 month. During the honey season they are dying by the hundred every day 

 and hatching out at the same rate. Thus the "wheel" turns round. 



To exhaust this subject would take an indefinite period. Like Tennyson's 

 "Brook," it has no end. 



Bee-keeping could be made a paying industry in this State, and if intelli- 

 gently managed would be a source of considerable revenue ; but as the men, 

 who constitute the reigning factors in our State government, cannot see the 

 matter in the light in which I have tried again and again to put it, I now 

 appeal to the "woman on the farm," the farmers' wives and their daughters. 

 It is up to you, ladies, to start the "ball a-rolling." I hope to live to see the 

 day when the farmers' wives have made such progress along this line that 

 their "masters" (?) will open their pocketbooks and cheerfully lend their 

 assistance. 



I guess you all have heard the story of the old woman and old man that 

 were attacked by a bear. The man, without offering any protection whatever 

 to his wife, climbed a tree and left her to fight the bear alone, which she did, 

 and very soon laid him low with an axe. When the bear breathed his last 

 breath, the old man came down from the tree and seizing the axe exclaimed : 

 "Stand aside, Martha, and let me show you how to kill that 'bar.' " 



So it will be, perhaps, with the farmer's wife and her bees. When she 

 begins to make annually from $50 to $100 from a half-dozen to a dozen boxes 

 of bees, giving them but a small portion of her time during the swarming 

 season, his eyes will then be opened perhaps, and he, no doubt, will then come 

 forward and offe'r to show her "how to keep bees." 



California produces, on an average, from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 pounds of 

 honey annually and ships to the eastern markets from 200 to 300 carloads 

 each year, and enjoys not only a national but an international reputation as 

 a honey-producing State. While North Carolina, on the other hand, which 

 has twice the number of bees of California, according to government statis- 

 tics, enjoys no reputation at all as a honey-producing State, though she has 

 a finer field for bees than California. What's the trouble? Answer: Crude 

 methods in North Carolina and scientific bee-keeping in California. 



As I have traveled extensively through North Carolina, California, Texas, 

 Florida and other honey-producing States, I can honestly say I have never 

 yet found a section that surpasses Western and Eastern North Carolina as 

 bee-producing sections. 



What we need to place North Carolina in the front ranks is energy, intelli- 

 gence and up-to-date methods. There is plenty of money in bees and honey, 

 but you will not get it by keeping your bees in old box-hives, hollow logs, 

 nail kegs, etc. Modern boxes, modern bees and modern methods are the 

 requisites to successful bee-keeping. 



